Valve has made an emasculatingly large amount of money this way. Following in the footsteps of Id Software, Valve has been very open with their development tools. I don’t know about the very earliest copies but the ZOMG GOTY edition of the original Half Life included its SDK on the disc. Counter Strike and Team Fortress started out as mods that Valve just…hired.
Releasing the tools to their customer base and then hiring the cream that rises to the top is a strategy I struggle to get mad at.
Thinking back, HL had a ridiculous quantity of high quality mods and TCs back in the day. Hell, Valve have even allowed HL to be remade and sold on steam.
“We’d prefer you didn’t use the word “Source” in the game title. You wanna sell Black Mesa on Steam?”
Natural Selection was a quality one.
I miss The Specialists and Vampire Slayer mods so so much…
Specialists mentioned
A few takeaways from the move:
- Any modifications must be released as mods
- Players downloading the mods must own the base game
- The mods must be free and no aspect of the mod can be monetized.
- The mods can now access TF2 steam inventory for cosmetics and weapons (but cannot modify the inventory)
Ugh, greedy Valve making you spend $0 to buy the base game
[Edit] ok I read the article after making that joke and I see that it applies to several other valve games, not all of which are free to play
Lol. It’s so greedy of them!
Jokes aside. It’s an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn’t mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.
Yeah, as a resident Valve hater I agree it’s a weird thing to get angry over.
If there was anything to get angry over is that I bought this game in a box (stand alone because I was too broke for Orange Box!) with an understanding that it’s an online multiplayer shooter. Meaning, there are servers you join manually from a list, shoot at other guys for a bit and return to that server or not based on how good time it was. This functionality has been ripped out of the game and replaced with some weird algorithm. Before that Valve broke their own design promises of clear silhouettes which made the game less accessible. The game has been dead, riddled with bots farming in-game items that can be traded for real money that Valve added to the game because they could. If it was any other game I wouldn’t care but TF2 started out as an amazing game that was mangled beyond recognition by Valve greed.
They should have released TF2 source code this way 10 years ago. They’re probably doing this now because income from TF2 related items on Marketplace is laughably small compared to their other titles.
This functionality has been ripped out of the game
Nope, see the server browser ingame
The game has been dead, riddled with bots
Not anymore!
The server list is still there fwiw. But yeah the matchmaking update was awful.
Isn’t this how they all are? L4d and l4d2 are the same unless you’re hosting a server with .smx plugins.
Sort of, but those let you use the pre-existing codebase for each game as is. This lets you play with the inner workings. You could do something drastic like implant rollback netcode, add new classes, wild shit.
Gotcha
Wow, this is an awesome move! We are honestly so lucky that Valve hasn’t enshittified like so many other gaming companies out there.
That’s because Valve isn’t owned by investors
Exactly.
This!
(upvotes are to the left FYI)
What a boss move by Valve
it only took 18 years and also several years of radio silence after some mod authors asked them to clarify the legality of their work
Source mod tools not to be confused with Sourcemod tools.
You’re a good doctor!
Aside from TF Classic and Pre Fortress, Pass Time 4v4 community is also planning for a mod release.
Goddamn, I miss those days! Got a real graphics card for TF2 (edit: I meant TF Classic) so I could see through water. Rocket jumping and cluster bombs, ahhhh. There was a mod with a grappling hook that was amazing.
Nice to see Epic isn’t the only company that cares about games. I might check this out just to learn
